And the excitement begins…
The excitement of tomorrow’s poll is just too palpable, with one chap saying rather loudly this morning that “we are getting rid of this party that has ruled for 33 years. 33 years vakomana. Now we can say whatever we want and not this nonsense where we have been afraid to speak our minds because there is a Zanu PF supporter close by!”
Oh boy, I said to myself.
And he did have a point, and for anyone to be able to say that in public, is enough to tell us a lot about the credibility of opinion polls peddled by state media that predict a Zanu PF landslide.
Of course sentiment expressed by folks in a public lift cannot stand the rigours of scientific scrutiny as representative of wider public opinion, yet it has become so current in the past few days with one chap saying today that he has stopped listening to people who trash Mugabe because some of them did not even register to vote.
It is thus interesting that because ZEC frustrated millions of people, denying them their democratic right to vote, how then does this reflect on the reliability of the public opinion surveys about people claiming they support Mugabe when in fact many failed to register?
One cannot dismiss the possibility that even Zanu PF supporters failed to register despite the widely accepted view that ZEC was particularly bent on disenfranchising MDC-T supporters. Talk about Zanu PF being hoisted on its own petard. It might as well have frustrated its own supporters from voting!
Talk about poetic justice, but then it’s going to be an intense next few hours as “excitable” voters already begin their celebration of Zanu PF’s exit, because like the other fellow commented: “I’m 33 years old and the only leader I have known is Mugabe, is that normal?”
Yet another chipped in with his own wisdom, insisting that “dai ndiri ini ndinopinda panyanga, no MP would live in Borrowdale, they would live in their constituencies and with potholes and cholera like the rest of us!”
With sentiments like these, if Mugabe steals the election, he could unwittingly be inviting street protests, yet the same holds true about a Tsvangirai victory as ZANU PF’s Jabulani Sibanda has already made it know they will “go back to the bush” if the MDC-T wins.
Some Afro-pessimists have previously opined that African elections only lead to political instability, and Zanu PF’s perpetual war mode certainly epitomizes that dystopia, so where does that leave us?
We will soon know.